Marlene, Liz...hang on with everything you have. I know it's unimaginable what you're going through. I am still not completely over my own battle, and now am watching my father lose his fight with lung cancer.

He was diagnosed a week after his younger sister passed away from it...my fifth week of radiation.
Of course, initially they were talking about significant success, and then dicovered his cancer had penetrated the left ventricle of his heart.

Radiation slowed the primary, but he couldn't tolerate chemo. He wound up in hospital with kidney failure after one round, so they stopped it.
A CT scan this past weeks shows infiltration into his hips and his other lung. He is in so much pain trying to walk around, and the choices left to him are to be medicated for pain until the end ( not long), or try additional radiation and a modified chemo cycle, add a month or two of life but be sick starting immeidately.

Tough choices. Ones that I firmly believe are his to make, and whatever he decides I will back him 110%.

I love him dearly and don't want to ever lose him. At the same time, I don't want to see him suffer through something that will not change the end result. It's not my choice, nor my call. Each of us has our own needs for moving from this life to the next. It is so terribly hard to watch...I FEEL the pain he is in; it is an old and personal enemy that I have battled. I UNDERSTAND his sense of dipair, and being overwhelmed....I have my own experience with both. He and I SHARE the hatred of the Beast that is cancer on a deep, intimate level.

Alcoholics Anonymous will tell you the only person who can truly relate to a drunk is another drunk; I think to a degree that is also truly of a cancer patient. That's not to say that you can't relate; you both can understand, sympathize and empathize with what your loved one is going through. My trouble is that I know from first hand experience how horrible the disease affects your body, in so many ways not obvious or even explainable to someone who has not endured them.

I wish you all peace, as much as that is possible. I wish for the two of you the understanding and support that you need so desparately right now. I hope this life, and it's consequences don't defeat you. There is much to come in our lives, good and bad. I think our best sometimes comes out in the worst circumstnaces. I see that in both your posts.

Your men are very lucky men indeed to have women like you beside them, walking with them through this journey.
Wayne